A groundbreaking book on teenage girls and sexuality by
new faculty member Deborah L. Tolman, professor of human sexuality studies,
has received the 2003 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association
for Women in Psychology.

The book, "Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality," was
published by Harvard University Press late last year while Tolman was
a senior research scientist and associate director at Wellesley College's
Center for Research on Women. She joined the SFSU faculty at the start
of the fall semester.

The award honors a work that makes significant and substantial contributions
to research and theory advancing the understanding of the psychology
of women, gender issues and sex roles. Tolman will receive the award
at the annual meeting of the Association for Women in Psychology in February.

"Dilemmas of Desire" is
designed for use by practitioners in such fields as psychiatry, adolescent
psychology and human sexuality.
It is based on extensive interviews with adolescent girls in urban and
suburban settings on their feelings about and experiences of their own
sexuality.

Through the book Tolman helps shed light on how teenage girls struggle
during a time when cultural messages often portray them as the object
of someone else's desire. But girls are virtually never depicted as someone
with acceptable sexual feelings of their own, she says.

Tolman said her research looks at how a double standard continues to
exist. Society assumes and approves of the burgeoning sexuality in boys,
she says, yet frowns at its equivalent in girls. That dichotomy leads
girls to experience their sexuality as a dilemma.

"This research underscores the importance of both boys and girls
knowledge about and respect of girls' own sexual feelings and the need
for girls to have a vocabulary larger than just 'no' to facilitate communication
in their adolescent relationship and enable them to make healthy sexual
choices," Tolman said. "Girls -- and boys -- deserve comprehensive
sexuality education and supportive adults who can help them navigate
this challenging time in their development."

A nationally known expert on adolescent sexuality, Tolman, who earned
her doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University
Graduate School of Education, joins one of the country's top academic
programs in human sexuality studies at SFSU and one of the few universities
to offer a master's degree in this multidisciplinary field.

Tolman, who founded the Gender and Sexuality Project at the Wellesley
Centers for Women, will teach courses at SFSU on developmental perspectives
in human sexuality, bio-psycho-social dimensions of human sexuality,
adolescent sexuality and research methods in human sexuality.

At SFSU She will continue her research work on adolescent sexuality
and female sexuality. She will be starting and directing a new research
center as part of the Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health,
currently comprised of the National Sexuality Resource Center and the
Human Sexuality Studies' Summer Institute.

She is now transitioning to SFSU her own research program on adolescent
sexuality development, the role of gender in adolescent relationships
and the impact of television on adolescent sexuality, funded by the National
Institute on Child Health and Development and the Ford Foundation.